It’s Wagner, yes, but not as you know him. Das
Liebesverbot, Wagner’s second opera, was laughed off the
stage after only one full performance (which is one more than Die
Feen, his first opera, ever got) and so it has fallen by the wayside
until a few more recent modern revivals.

The first thing everybody tells you about it is that it’s a world
away from the mature Wagner, and that’s true, but only up to a
point. It’s Wagner’s experiment with Italianate comedy,
set in Sicily with a plot modelled after Shakespeare’s Measure
for Measure. In many ways it’s Wagner doing his best Donizetti
impression, with a buffo baritone, a high tenor in the leading lover
role and more bel canto-style ensembles than you could shake
a stick at. However, that doesn’t make it invalid. As a pastiche
work it’s actually very impressive, and if it wasn’t sung
in German you could easily mistake it for something more Mediterranean.
Furthermore, it has shades of later Wagner, too. Sometimes these are
explicit, such as the phrase from the convent scene that turns up in
Tannhäuser’s Rome Narration, or stylistic, the big ensembles that
end the acts aren’t a million miles from those that end each act
of Tannhäuser or Lohengrin.

Nevertheless, you’re not going to come across it very often, and
I’m pretty sure this is the only DVD of it out there (though,
for a rarity, there are actually quite a few CD recordings, too). If
you want to see it, therefore, you have a bit of a Hobson’s
choice, even if you don’t go in for Kasper Holten’s vision.
Late of London’s Royal Opera House, Holten came to Covent Garden
with some extremely successful productions to his name, but didn’t
make quite the splash that was hoped for. This Liebesverbot
is symptomatic of many of the virtues and problems of his approach.
One huge set serves for all the scenes, but it does so with great versatility,
and a special credit should go to Steffen Aarfing for his designs. The
simplicity of Isabella’s convent or the claustrophobia of Duke
Friedrich’s room sit alongside a gaudy carnival scene or, as seen
on the DVD cover, an eye-poppingly gaudy red-light district for the
opening scene.

All that is great, but Holten can’t resist some of his too-clever-by-half
ideas. His characters are obsessed with selfies and iPhones, something
now so unoriginal as to be dull, and there is zero gain to the proclamations
flashing up on everyone’s phone screen, as well as being projected
down the side of the proscenium. The modern dress is fine, but he struggles
to know what to do with the chorus beyond a few Wagnerian in-jokes,
such as lots of horned helmets and even a Wotan costume in the carnival
scene. Nor can he solve the problems thrown up by Wagner’s apprenticeship
stagecraft, such as what on earth to do with the character of Dorella,
who is important at the beginning but becomes sidelined as the piece
goes on.

Musically, the cast is led by the ever-dependable Christopher Maltman,
who gives a touch of magic to the rather archetypal figure of the wicked
duke. Manuela Uhl struggles to settle into the ungrateful tessitura,
but does a very good job once she does. Peter Lodahl, as the love interest,
is a little screechy at the outset, but my ear became attuned to him
as the film went on. Ante Jerkunica is a solid comic buffo before pretty
much disappearing from the story. The smaller soprano roles are well
taken too, with María Miró proving a good foil to the heroically chaste
Isabella. The finest heroes, however, are the orchestra, who play the
score as though it were Meistersinger, sounding like gods right
from the sparkling overture to the jolly resolution. Ivor Bolton can’t
ever have imagined himself conducting this score, but he takes to it
like a duck to water and argues a very persuasive case for it.

So if this is the only Liebesverbot you’ll ever see then
it’s actually a pretty solid one. The cost however (fairly steep
for just one DVD), means you’ll need to be committed if you’re
going to give it a go. There are, moreover, no extras. You can see José
M. Irurzun’s review of the original staged production here.